Cool Cambodia

Welcome to Cambodia! Getting the visa at the Siem Reap airport was much different than Vietnam. There was an ATM 6 feet from the visa counter that dispensed crisp US dollars. The airport was very new and friendly. We had our visa in ten minutes and were picked up by our hotel right away in a Toyota minivan just like we had growing up! Except the steering wheel was on the right side. I think Cambodia used to drive on the left…. But now they drive on the right but half the cars have wheels on the right. Odd. Our hotel was gorgeous with wood carvings everywhere. This place has awesome service and character. Everyone smiles and bows here. It is like Thailand was years ago.

The Bayon temple was our second favorite temple. It was built in the late 12th century or early 13th century as the official state temple of the Mahayana Buddhist King Jayavarman VII. It is the centerpiece of a new capital city… called Angkor Thom. If you really like something in Cambodia you say "awkun thom thom"… because tom just means big. So thank you big big! The cool thing about Bayon is that it is Buddhist! And there are towers with four Buddhist heads looking in all directions. Around the walls of Bayon Temple were Hindu scriptures from the Ramayana and the Mahabarata. This was pretty cool The guide was really impressed that Abe knew all the names of the characters and even knew one that he had forgotten. We are 3000 miles from India.


To see Angkor Wat we hired a guide to pick us up at 8am and hit the temples. The guide met us in the lobby and his nae was Ley. The drivers name was Deem, and we used the Toyota van to explore about 3 to 5 temples a day. The biggest was Angkor Wat. It was built for the king Suryavarman II in the early 12th century as a temple to Hindu gods. There he built a city nearby as well, which would be the capital of his Kymer empire. It is the biggest temple we saw. The walls and the moat are miles long. The temple has three levels. The temple faces west. Our guide also says that Angkor means city and Wat means temple so the title simply means city temple. We read somewhere that Hinduism came into the Khmer empire around the first century AD. The Sanskrit language came with it. Ancient Khmer is similar to Sanscrit, and modern Cambodian is a derived from it as well. All the temples are designed to represent Mount Meru, home of the gods in Hindu mythology. This mythical place rests in an ocean so they built the Angkor temples surrounded by moats so it looks like an ocean of sorts. Pretty cool stuff. As the best-preserved temple it has become a symbol of Cambodia and it appears on its national flag. It had brought a lot of people to Siem Reap too! This town has changed so much in ten years, I don’t even recognize it. It is a haven for cheap food and relaxed atmosphere. I could see going on vacation here. People grumble about the fast build up of this town around the temples, but it has become a fun place to hang out with restaurants and pool halls. And it hasn’t lost its charm around the temples. You just have to get up early to avoid the crowds… like Disneyland, except real ruins and architecture.

Here is another temple we saw called Baphuon...it is being re-constructed by the French and has a reclining buddha on the back side of it.















Later that night we climbed the hill/temple near Angkor Wat called Phnom Bakheng to watch the sunset. Kaitlin wasn’t interested in taking the Elephant ride to the top for twenty dollars. The seats are like 16 feet off the ground and as the Elephants waddle they rock side to side. Luckily the last elephant pulled away just as we arrived so we didn’t have to debate. The walk was nice but the top of the temple was dangerously crowded and the temple stairs are like steep uneven and curvy, pretty much a lawsuit waiting to happen. But that is the Indiana Jones feel to this place. The steps are the real deal. We left just before sunset so we beat the crowds down. We didn’t want to get caught on a stampede on those stairs and it was far too high to jump. Very high!!

Tomb Raider!!! On the second day we visited the tomb raider temple. Ta Prohm. I mean, it was there many thousands of years before Lara Croft… I mean ABE was even there before Angelina saw it. Anway it was cool. We saw trees growing out of mossy rocks. It was a sea of green mold and grey sandstone. The muddy paths were made of red earth. It was colorful in its ruined state. We beat the crowds and just as we left they swarmed in with tour buses. That night we ate at the Red Piano restaurant where Angelina Jolie ate when she was filming Tomb Raider. He tried the signature Angelina cocktail. It tasted like tonic. We shopped around the old market and bargained our way down the aisles, avoiding the fish section. Pe-ew!

Here are some cool pictures of the Tomb Raider temple...check out the trees!!

Abe's Lara Croft pose












































Abe posing with the Angelina Jolie cocktail...he's trying really hard to smile like her

The old market. A fun place to shop!

Four Wheeling Adventure: The best part of this week was Abe’s birthday. We celebrated here in Cambodia by going on an ATV ride across rice fields. It was by far the best thing we've done in Cambodia!! We saw dozens of children playing outside their houses built on stilts. The kids ran to the dirt road to watch us pass waving vigorously and smiling. With no wires running beside the roads here we have come to the conclusion that most people who work in our hotel servings us food live in houses with no electricity. They seem happy but it must be hard. At the orphanage we saw buildings built by westerners from the Netherlands and Germany. We also saw signs on dozens of wells dug on the north side of town. These signs said things like this well was built by Americans, French, British tourists etc. It was pretty cool.


Great Atmosphere: Things are nice here in Cambodia. Even the infamously noisy tuk tuks or rickshaws of India are quiet here in town because they are carts attached to the back of the motorbike by a hinge. It is almost like flying in a warm breeze. The tuk tuk drivers don’t try and cheat you. Much like in India where they said “pay as you like” here in Cambodia they say “same same as you did before” meaning whatever you paid to get to town you should just pay that amount to get home. So 3 dollars was the going rate, and we paid 4 dollars each time. One guys motorbike started to break down in the pouring rain so we paid him 6.


We are heading back to town to do some more shopping at the old market. Tomorrow morning we leave for Thailand. We can't wait to get to the beach!!!

Kabe